Atonality, Atonality

This situation had come about historically through the increasing use over the course of the nineteenth century of ambiguous chords, less probable harmonic inflections, and the more unusual melodic and rhythmic inflections possible within the style [1] of tonal music. The distinction between the exceptional and the normal became more and more blurred; and, as a result, there was a concomitant loosening of the syntactical bonds through which tones and harmonies had been related to one another. The connections between harmonies were uncertain even on the lowestchord-to-chordlevel. On higher levels, long-range harmonic relationships and implications became so tenuous that they hardly functioned at all. At best, the felt probabilities of the style system had become obscure; at worst, they were approaching a uniformity which provided few guides for either composition or listening. (Meyer 1967, 241) The first phase, known as "free atonality" or "free chromaticism", involved a conscious attempt to avoid traditional diatonic harmony. Works of this period include the opera Wozzeck (19171922) by Alban Berg and Pierrot Lunaire (1912) by Schoenberg.

Additionally George Perle explains that, "the 'free' atonality that preceded dodecaphony precludes by definition the possibility of self-consistent, generally applicable compositional procedures" (Perle 1962, 9). However, he provides one example as a way to compose atonal pieces, a pre-twelve tone technique piece by Anton Webern, which rigorously avoids anything that suggests tonality, to choose pitches that do not imply tonality. In other words, reverse the rules of the common practice period so that what was not allowed is required and what was required is not allowed. This is what was done by Charles Seeger in his explanation of dissonant counterpoint, which is a way to write atonal counterpoint (Seeger 1930).

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